The new year has brought with it new responsibilities, new experiences, and new interests. Today, I'm a week away from my annual solo recital on the Southeastern University series and am contemplating my preparation.
In recent days, I have enjoyed hearing works such as Schumann's Aufschwung take on a wonderful dimension when played in studio class in the large space of Bush Chapel. I often find that the true potential of a work isn't really revealed until it is heard in a concert space. I've also been very pleased by my students and their independent preparation of works learned over the Christmas break. Thank you, Dr. Kaplinsky, for trying that idea with your studio back in 1992.
Also on my mind these days is The King's Speech which I finally got around to seeing. I was moved by this story of determination and I thought about how little determination I put into things. I want to put determination into the arts and into peace in the here and now.
Last week, we had the pleasure of hearing the same young musician play both Tchaikowsky's Rococo Variations and Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto. Between the two works was Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, a veritable concerto for orchestra that expresses Rachmaninoff's faith with numerous references to his earlier works. This technique of "life motifs" reminded me of the rich symbolic syntax of Shostakovich's symphonies.
A few days after that, we attended the memorial concert for Florida Southern College's Robert MacDonald, a gentleman who was a great force in the shaping of Lakeland's arts life. His students admirably played works by Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Gershwin to a packed house. Family members also performed with flare and poise as they celebrated and grieved. Testimonies indicated the life-changing compassion and selfless giving of the man.
And now, I turn to my own work.
Someone recently asked me if there was a theme for my upcoming recital. My answer was "things I can play . . .given the amount of practicing I am doing."While I haven't been doing as much solo playing as I used to, I am hoping that I can achieve ease and successful communication in performing through good quality thinking as I prepare.
Really, from back in the summer, I was aiming to make this program a return to more serious pianism for me. I have been pursuing practicing, when I've had time, with that in mind. Through that, I have been learning that piano-playing answers really come through practicing.
My plan in this last week is to approach the recital as a sharing of great texts. These works, pieces by Bach, Mozart, and Brahms, are wonderfully textured fabrics, and when shared with listeners, somehow, out of the forms, the flow, and the phrasing, a semblance of life springs. It is my role to know these great texts better and better, to ponder and convey the discoveries of their composers. The performance really is a recitation of patterns and possibilities as envisioned by these geniuses.
In addition to those great traditional works, I'll also be sharing a little essay of my own in musical landscape writing. My three Chowan Etudes were really more etudes for the composer than the performer, while the concluding work of the recital is definitely an etude for the performer. My friend, James M. Guthrie, has written a superb work combining a Brahmsian sensibility with octatonic pitch organization and the occasional ancient-sounding cadence. Of all the new pieces I've played, this one strikes me as exciting and unique enough to become part of the standard repertoire if a few other pianists would start playing it.
As I think back over the repertoire I just mentioned, there might be a more satisfying theme in the idea of the vortex. From Bach through Guthrie, these pieces typify the swirling movement and organization of our world, external and internal. Maybe feeling that in the music can help us all to embrace such a dynamic in our lives. Myself in particular!
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
On Re-hearing Beethoven's Eroica and Something a Little Bird Told Me
This evening, I had the important privilege of hearing a live performance of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. I've taught the piece many times but have not heard it in person for years.
As I listened to our Imperial Symphony Orchestra play, I was reaffirmed in my calling to classical music. I sensed once again the special place in the human experience held by art forms such as the orchestra, the ballet, the opera, gamelan, or gagaku . . . in which numerous performers collaborate and coordinate at a high level in an endeavor that invites the individual and the culture into deep philosophical consideration. To maintain such traditions must truly be to stand against the everyday undermining of civilization.
During Beethoven's sonic epic, I was stirred by countless thoughts:
how grand the conception and masterful the craft
how modern the sounds - engaging in every fluid moment, plus Rite and Spring is already there
how imaginative the orchestral color
and what a melding of patterning and human emotion
what creativity of form
what limitless depths suggested within such well-defined boundaries
not to mention the long journey from at least J.S. Bach through his sons to Haydn with some influence from Mozart, all of whose contributions were needed to make such things possible
On the same concert, my colleague and friend, Annabelle Gardiner, performed The Lark Ascending of Vaughan Williams. Her playing was characterized by seamless bowing, sure intonation, and beautiful inflection, all amounting to a statement of profound serenity. While the musical movement was very natural, the touch of Vaughan Williams somehow placed it within a greater parenthesis of stillness. And in that stillness, I felt an acknowledgment that our grasp on the moment is feeble, that the present is always slipping into memory, and that nature breathes with us.
More wonderful than all of this was the fact that, as I mentioned to another friend, the work is ideal for Annabelle in that its virtuosity is selfless and its ways are graceful, genuine, and without power-oriented rhetoric. It's a perfect work for this colleague who is always nurturing, genuine, and humble. Those spiritual qualities are why I think she can play beyond categories of presentation and confidence, replacing them with much-needed presence and empathy.
Thank you ISO, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, and Annabelle Gardiner.
And to all, a good night.
As I listened to our Imperial Symphony Orchestra play, I was reaffirmed in my calling to classical music. I sensed once again the special place in the human experience held by art forms such as the orchestra, the ballet, the opera, gamelan, or gagaku . . . in which numerous performers collaborate and coordinate at a high level in an endeavor that invites the individual and the culture into deep philosophical consideration. To maintain such traditions must truly be to stand against the everyday undermining of civilization.
During Beethoven's sonic epic, I was stirred by countless thoughts:
how grand the conception and masterful the craft
how modern the sounds - engaging in every fluid moment, plus Rite and Spring is already there
how imaginative the orchestral color
and what a melding of patterning and human emotion
what creativity of form
what limitless depths suggested within such well-defined boundaries
not to mention the long journey from at least J.S. Bach through his sons to Haydn with some influence from Mozart, all of whose contributions were needed to make such things possible
On the same concert, my colleague and friend, Annabelle Gardiner, performed The Lark Ascending of Vaughan Williams. Her playing was characterized by seamless bowing, sure intonation, and beautiful inflection, all amounting to a statement of profound serenity. While the musical movement was very natural, the touch of Vaughan Williams somehow placed it within a greater parenthesis of stillness. And in that stillness, I felt an acknowledgment that our grasp on the moment is feeble, that the present is always slipping into memory, and that nature breathes with us.
More wonderful than all of this was the fact that, as I mentioned to another friend, the work is ideal for Annabelle in that its virtuosity is selfless and its ways are graceful, genuine, and without power-oriented rhetoric. It's a perfect work for this colleague who is always nurturing, genuine, and humble. Those spiritual qualities are why I think she can play beyond categories of presentation and confidence, replacing them with much-needed presence and empathy.
Thank you ISO, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, and Annabelle Gardiner.
And to all, a good night.
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